Previously unreleased audio recordings of Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich talking gambling legislation and campaign contributions were played in all their ignominy during his impeachment trial Tuesday. There's a lot more going on here than a vacant Senate seat.

Rep. Pete Hoekstra, R-Mich., responding to closed testimony from the CIA's acting general counsel, John Rizzo, said it appeared that the officer who destroyed evidence of "enhanced" interrogations was acting against orders. Jose Rodriguez, the official in question, is asking for immunity before he tells his side of the story to Congress.

On Wednesday, the same day that Attorney General Mukasey announced the launching of a federal probe into the destruction of CIA interrogation tapes, the chairman and vice chairman of the 9/11 Commission, Thomas H. Kean and Lee H. Hamilton, respectively, published an explosive Op-Ed piece in The New York Times slamming the CIA and the Bush administration for "stonewalling" their investigation.

Tapes? Oh, those tapes! CIA officials are justifying their failure to hand over videotapes of "severe interrogation" methods by saying they were not specifically asked for them. The officials were reacting to criticism by former 9/11 Commission members.

A new report by The New York Times suggests that the White House was a lot closer to those secret CIA torture tapes than has been previously suggested "At least four top White House lawyers took part in discussions between 2003 and 2005 about whether to destroy videotapes," according to the Gray Lady.

U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy, who in June 2005 ordered the Bush administration to protect "all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees" at Guantanamo Bay, has now ordered the administration to explain why it destroyed two videotapes of such treatment just five months later.

Newly installed Attorney General Michael Mukasey swiftly shot down requests by House and Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, as well as other members of Congress, for information about the Justice Department's investigation of the CIA tape destruction fiasco -- because the department would seem "subject to political influence." Oh.